History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 90

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198

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The sixth article recites that "The enemies of the United States have endeavored by every artifice in their power to possess the Indians in general with the opinion that it is the design of the states aforesaid to extirpate the Indians and take possession of their country. To obviate such false suggestions the United States do guarantee to the afore- said nation of Delawares and their heirs all their territorial rights in the fullest and most ample manner, as it hath been bounded by former treaties, as long as they, the said Delaware Nation, shall abide by and hold fast the chain of friendship now entered into. And it is further agreed between the contracting parties, should it be found conducive to the mutual interests of both parties, to invite any other tribes who have been friends to the interests of the United States, to join the present confederation and form a state whereof the Delaware Nation shall be the head and have a representation in Congress."

By the law of nations this treaty bound the United States to protect the rights thus guaranteed to the Delaware Nation. The territorial right of eminent domain to a state as large as Pennsylvania was expressly conceded to the Delawares by this treaty. It was under these promises and guarantees that the most expert and best warriors of that nation went forth to battle for the cause of liberty for themselves and our forefathers. Many of the best scouts were drawn from the warriors of the Delawares. Six hundred effective warriors were furnished General Washington by this devoted tribe during one season. The United

States and the Delawares were both fighting on the same issue-for independence from the British crown and of all the world. The brave warriors of the Indian Nation fought our battles; the tribe supplied our troops with food and horses; we paid them in continental money, unredeemed specimens of which remain among the Delawares to this day; the War of Independence closed with a halo of glory: the celebrated Delaware chief. Hengue Pushees, had won the rank of lieutenant-colonel for his courage, daring and efficiency as a scout. He was gratefully thanked by General Washington for his invaluable services in the War of the Revolution; and this red hero, with his brave followers, went home to their wigwams to prepare for the admission of their state into the Union.

Where are they now? Alas, their braves are no more: their hearts have been broken by our ingratitude, by our base refusal to keep our treaty stipulations. On the 21st of January, 1785, they removed with the Wyandotts to Ohio and Indiana; this is to be the new state promised them. On the oth of January, 1789, a part of the land ceded is taken away ; on the 3d of August, 1795, many of the Indian tribes are placed on the Delaware lands: in June. 1803, their boundaries are diminished; on the 18th of August. 1804. they surrender more of their lands; on the 4th of July. 1805. a new boundary is established, and on the 2Ist of August. 1805, the Delawares release to the United States a portion of their lands; on the 3d of September, 1800, another cession is made to the United States, commissioners pretended that the lands allotted to the Delawares and Wyandotts belonged to the Miamies ; on the 22d of July, 1814, the war with Great Britain induced us to make a second war treaty with the Delawares to procure their aid and to make a second faithless promise to establish the boundaries of their lands forever: on the 8th of September. 1815, the United States recognized the fidelity of the Delawares in taking up the tomahawk and going on the war path in defense of their unselfish allies of the pale faces; on the 3d of October, 1818. they ceded all their lands in Indiana, the Ohio lands having been ceded before. They removed to the White River in Missouri and Arkansas, and on the 24th of September. 1820, they are removed to the lands between the Kansas and the Missouri rivers, and a broken fragment of the nation that had gone to Cape Giradean. in 1703, where they had received a grant from the Spanish governor for lands west of the Missouri in Kansas, But they are to hold these Kansas lands forever; this was to be their last removal; the

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boundaries were fixed by two large rivers, and the other two lines made the square com- plete which they were to hold forever. They were now happy; they had made great progress in agriculture and manufactures; in the raising of horses, sheep and cattle; and another fragment of the nation had been removed from a fertile, beautiful tract of land on the Sandusky River to a permanent home in Kansas, under the promise that the Delaware Nation should thereby be united under one head, and that thirty-six sections of land should be appropriated for the establishment of schools for the education of the Delaware children.

Where are these brave Delawares now? They have been driven from this last perma- nent home down near the Canadian River, and a pitiful tract of eighteen miles square is all the territory that remains for this once mighty nation which was to form a state; to have representation in Congress ; to hold the vast lands held by them in 1778 by fixed boundaries as an independent state. That pitiful tract of eighteen miles square of land would hardly furnish sepulture for the heroes of that nation who have sacrificed their lives in battle in two great wars, and for the martyrs of that nation whose blood has been shed and whose hearts have been broken by the tyranny, ingratitude and cruelty of this magnanimous Government, whose Christian mission has been proudly proclaimed to the world to be to protect. nourish. cherish, civilize, educate and defend these wards and pupils of American civilization. With the history of this Indian nation before us, these friends of William Penn, these allies and soldiers of George Washington, these allies and soldiers of General Harrison, will not again be disturbed in their new home until some adjoining marauding band of pale-faced robbers covet it and apply to the Government of the United States to further protect, cherish and befriend their ancient allies, the Delawares, by driving them back to the waste of the American desert, where they will perish of hunger and furnish a poor repast for the prairie wolves.

llistory teaches us that retributive justice, sent from God, has overtaken all sinful nations, in all times. The crime of slavery has been expiated by the lives of a million of our countrymen, and our cruelty and bad faith toward our Indian wards is calling down upon 115 the righteous vengeance of heaven.

An outrage so horribly cruel as to exceed almost the bounds of belief was committed upon the Indians at Fort Kearney in 1856. The facts were substantially as follows: Two young Indians belonging to a party of Cheyennes were sent to the road to beg some tobacco of a driver of a mail wagon. The driver fired upon them, whereupon one of them, as the Indians themselves afterwards said, "being a fool and mad," shot an arrow and wounded the white man. The chief of the Cheyenne party, on seeing this, ran out with others to the protection of the mail driver and punished the young Indian who had shot the arrow by whipping him according to the Indian laws. But this whipping did not wipe out the Indian boy's offense. An "Indian outrage" must, of course, be made out of the case and the military be called on to avenge it. The next day, accordingly, the troops from the fort valorously sallied forth and attacked the Cheyenne party, who refused to fight them and ran away, leaving their horses, bows and arrows and robes in camp. Six young braves remained behind to make something like a formal surrender. They went up to the soldiers, threw down their arms, and held out their hands in sign of submission and were mercilessly shot down in cold blood when only a few yards from the troops.

Another instance: During the summer of 1854 some bands of Sioux were encamped within six miles of Fort Laramie. They were regarded as friendly Indians and were on terms of friendship with the officers of the fort. A man from a neighboring tribe, whose relations had the year before been slaughtered by the troops of the fort, happened to be among these bands of Sioux. Some Mormon emigrants passed by the Indian camp and a cow escaped from them and ran toward the Indian village. The Indian whose relatives had been killed, by way of revenge for the loss, killed the cow. Complaint was made at the fort, and the chiefs, upon being called upon, said they would see that reparation was made for the damage which had been done. But this was not satisfactory to the commanding officer. Ile detailed a brevet lieutenant with a company to arrest the Indian. The company proceeded to the Indian camp with two pieces of artillery. Demand was made to the chiefs. but the offending Indian said to them :

"I have taken a lodge here. I am willing to die. You have nothing to do with the matter : the responsibility is not upon your people, but upon me alone."

This remark was no sooner made to the lieutenant than he fired, killing one man and crippling the principal chief. The chiefs rallied and exhorted the men to commit no out- rage. Their influence controlled the action of the Indians, but a drunken interpreter excited the lieutenant and caused him, perhaps, to fire his cannon. The'next thing was the sounding of the war whoop, and the lieutenant and some of his men were killed. The others ran and were pursued by the Indians, and every man of them was slaughtered.

Who will say, reasoning from analogy and common sense, and especially from a philosophical view of Indian character, that the whites were not to blame in this case? And yet. concealing or distorting the facts, the ears of the public were made to tingle with the report of "another Indian massacre," and an official announcement from the war department deluded the Government and people into a belief that the affair was an ambuscade and a part of a deliberate plan on the part of the Indians to massacre the troops and plunder the fort.

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I will now cite another glaring case of injustice toward the Winnebagoes, a tribe of Indians formerly located in that portion of the Northwestern Territory which is now embraced in the State of Wisconsin. Our first treaty with these Indians was in 1816; since then we treated with them in 1829, 1832, 1837, 1848 and 1855. In 1862 we find the Winnebagoes located upon a beautiful reservation in the State of Minnesota, where they were prosperous and happy, many of them having acquired a practical knowledge of agriculture and the mechanical arts. Their treaty of February, 1855, had guaranteed to them a permanent home on a reservation eighteen miles square, and a large sum of money. There they had erected their houses, opened their farms, and remained perfectly peaceable. It was at this time that the Sioux outbreak took place in that state, but the Winnebagoes remainded steadfast to their treaty obligations. But their time had again come. Their reservation, their lands, their homes, were demanded by the people of Minnesota. The permanent homes which the Government had guaranteed to them must be abandoned. Their attachment to the graves of their fathers and friends availed them not. The Government assented; it lent its aid to forcibly violate its own solemn treaty with these friendly Indians and without the least valid exeuse force them from their comfortable houses to a barren and inhospitable country 500 miles westward on the Missouri River. There hundreds of these friendly Indians died from exposure and starvation. When sickness and suffering compelled them to seek the settlements for succor they were forced back by military power over stones and ice, marking their trail with the blood that trickled from their lacerated feet. I have seen among these same friendly Winnebagoes, while thus persecuted by the sancton of the Government, the starving infant struggling with fretful cries at the breast of a dying mother to draw the warmth of life from those nipples chilled and milkless under the embrace of death. Hundreds of these people died then and their bones are bleaching upon those inhospitable plains as monuments of foul disgrace to our nation by whose oppressive policy these innocents have been destroyed.

But all of these atrocities pale into insignificance before those committed upon the Indians of California, Oregon and Washington territories on the western slope. The massacre by Chivington at Sand Creek, Colorado, by which hundreds of men, women and helpless children were butchered in cold blood is another striking instance of our cruelty.

During the massacre in Minnesota in 1862 several white women and children were taken captives and carried to the Upper Missouri. Through the interposition of Colonel Galpin and a number of friendly Sioux, who exchanged their own horses for them, two women, and five little girls were ransomed and returned to their friends in Minnesota. The Indians who had performed this act of humanity traveled down to the Yankton agency, a distance of 400 miles, where they were to be reimbursed for this act by the Government. Week after week passed away and neither clothing nor food came to the relief of these faithful friends. Despairing of early relief, one morning ten of their number came to me for a letter, stating who they were, and obtained permission to go out and hunt for the support of themselves and families. The third morning out, and when on Ponca Creek, about twenty miles back of Fort Randall, which post was then garrisoned by the Sixth lowa Cavalry, a Captain Moreland, in command of some twenty men, overtook them. They presented him with the letter I had given them for their protection, whereupon the captain requested them to leave their arms and go with him to the fort for food. The Indians obeyed, but had not proceeded eighty rods when the brutal captain ordered his men to fire upon the Indians, who were in advance, and murdered nine out of the ten in cold blood on the spot. The tenth member of the party escaped and bore the horrible tidings of this damnable tragedy to his kindred far up the Missouri, while the bones of his comrades still remain on that fatal spot to chronicle the font deed and point unmistakably to the cause of the Sioux war which followed with fearful and just retaliation and cost the treasury of the nation more than thirty million dollars and the loss of hundreds of innocent lives.

These and similar outrages have been the cause of all our difficulties with the Indians ; while with most of the tribies located on reservations, with annuities and under the control of agents, no trouble had been found. Especially had those Indians been peaceable and improved in the arts of civilized life who had been placed under state rule. The New York and New England Indians have exhibited no act of hostility for eighty-five years, and have abandoned their roving and savage habits. In view of these facts I would favor the trans- fer by the Government of the Indians to the respective states and territories wherein they are located. None are so well fitted to take charge of our Indian tribes as the people who reside with them, whose lives and property, whose wives and children, are within reach of the tomahawk and the scalping knife: who are themselves always vitally interested in main- taining peaceful relations with the Indians by a uniform course of just, fair, and impartial dealing.

The interest on the money expended in carrying on our Indian wars would be sufficient to comfortably provide for all the Indians. All we have to do to quiet our Indian troubles and restore peace to the borders, and regain the confidence and friendship of the Indian. is to treat him kindly, deal with him justly, and convince him by humane acts that we desire to befriend and save him.

Instead of sending soldiers armed with instruments of death and munitions of war to demoralize, degrade and murder them, let us send philanthropists ladened with food and

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clothing to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and all the implements of peace necessary for their physical, mental and moral advancement. Make comfortable homes for the poor, wandering tribes, feed and clothe them until they become sufficiently advanced in the arts of civilized life to provide for themselves. Teach the rising generation to till the soil, instruet them in the mechanic arts, in all the varied duties of domestic life, and raise them as rapidly as possible toward our own standard, thereby fitting them for a better mode of life, and their incorporation into the states and territories of the Union. No class of men are so easily managed, more harmless and reliable, than the North American Indian when once you possess their confidence; none more unmanageable, heartless and cruel than they when that confidence is destroyed by wrongs and oppression. The expense of feeding, clothing and providing homes for our 250,000 Indians does not exceed two million dollars annually and by adopting the humane policy we would save five times this amount, which now goes to support the army in the Indian country. Of two deficiency bills now pending before Congress, one calls for $500,000 for feeding and taking care of 12,000 Indians for eight months, under the charge of General Harney; while the other calls for $13,000,000 for carrying on our present Indian war in the Southwest for the last six months and against a much smaller number of Indians. Forty regiments of troops are now engaged in the Indian country, including the Kansas regiment, and the expense to the Government for carrying on this war will exceed forty million dollars a year.

Three years ago I proposed a plan to this House which looked to the setting apart of a large reservation in the Northwest for the exclusive use and occupancy of all the Indian tribes north of the Platte and east of the Rocky Mountains. I am still of the opinion that this is the true policy so far as the unlocated tribes are concerned, and that one or two other reservations should be set apart on the Pacific Coast for the location of the tribes west of the Rocky Mountains. Upon these reservations all the tribes should be located except those now provided for and which are advancing in civilization and toward citizenship. This course will close our Indian wars forever; this will restore peace, permanent and enduring in its character. It will do away with the necessity of at least two-thirds of our army ; it will save from fifteen to thirty million dollars annually to the national treasury; it will save hundreds of valuable lives every year; it will obviate untold miseries, wipe out our national injustice, and reclaim the poor, neglected, down-trodden Indians from their present state of abject misery, and restore them to the enjoyment of life and its attendant blessings, which are the free gift of God to all his children.

Our "Indian Peace Commission" was organized two years ago. This commission is com- posed of the first men in the civil and military service. After a thorough investigation, had in the heart of the Indian country, these commissioners were forced to the conclusion that our troubles were due to the aggressions of the whites and bad faith on the part of the Government, and it was agreed by the commissioners that a radical change was demanded, and that a pacific policy was the only one which promised success. Accordingly, treaties were negotiated with nearly all the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains, and although the stipulations for food and clothing were long delayed by the Government, the 30,000 Sioux who were parties to the treaties had remained perfectly friendly, and will continue so as long as we fullfil our part of the obligation.

General Harney, an officer of the regular army, who has seen more than fifty years of honorable service, much of which has been in the Indian country, was selected as one of the commissioners. He was present and took part in making all these late treaties. He knew just what they contained, what they meant, and was wisely selected to take charge of the large district which has been set apart for the sole use and occupancy of the Sioux Nation. It was late in the season when this veteran officer undertook the herculean task of locating and feeding these Indians through the approaching winter. The only means of transportation to the district was up the Missouri River, the waters of which were so low as to more than double the cost of transportation. There had been but $200,000 placed in his hands to enable him to carry into effect the solemn treaties with the Sioux, who, upon the faith of its guarantees, had just abandoned the warpath and pledged themselves on a future life of peace and friendship. The number of Indians who, by the terms of this treaty, were to receive a pound of beef and a pound of flour per day, exceeded twenty-five thousand in number. Provision had to be made to feed them for at least six months. After making allowance for those who could not get into the reservation before spring, it was estimated that 15,000 would have to be subsisted for at least six months before supplies could reach them in the spring. This alone would require 3.600,000 pounds of beef, which, at a cost of 12 cents a pound. amounts to $432.000 ; and 3,600,000 pounds of flour, at 10 cents per pound, $360,000; a total of $792.000. In addition to these articles it was provided by treaty that houses should be built. sawmills erected, horses and cattle purchased, farming and mechanical implements supplied for the use of the Indians. For the faithful performance of which General Harney was supplied with the insignificant sum of $200,000. He went forward. encountered the difficulty and overcame it. He realized that the issues of peace and war were in his hands. To fail to carry out the letter and spirit of the treaty was to rekindle the flame of a long, cruel and costly Indian war throughout the Northwest, while the dis- charge of the national obligation promised the enjoyment of peace and tranquillity through- out that entire section of country which had so long been the scene of savage warfarc. By the honest. fearless and determined efforts of this just man, this true patriot and philanthro-

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pist, the peace and safety of our frontiers have been secured, a long and cruel war averted or arrested, and millions of dollars saved to the treasury, while the warmest gratitude of unnumbered thousands of our citizens in the Northwest attest the value of the meritorions services which he has rendered to them and the country.

But two methods for the adjustment of these difficulties are now thought of. That proposed and so successfully inaugurated by the peace commission commends itself to the favorable consideration of the Christian statesman and philanthropist, and the true econ- omist. By its adoption the Indians will witness our returning good faith and rejoice; they will abandon the warpath and settle down on their reservations; peace and safety will reign uninterruptedly throughout our entire territorial domain; hope will once more be lighted in the red man's heart, and the spirit of his brave progenitors will again elevate his depressed nature. On the contrary, if war, murder, robbery and rapine are to be persisted in, and the policy of extermination, or subjugation even, is to be carried out, our frontiers are doomed to a fresh baptism of fire and blood unparalleled in the history of Indian warfare, and our national treasury will be doomed to inevitable bankruptcy.

Mr. Speaker, I have entered on the last month of my congressional duties. I neither ask nor desire political honors. A sense of duty alone has prompted me to the consideration of this subject. On the pages of my country's history these feeble utterances in behalf of this down-trodden race will stand as a lasting admonition of past cruelty and neglect toward all the Indian tribes of this country, and as a warning of judgment to come, if time con- tinues and God reigns, unless we discharge the obligations which he has imposed upon this Government toward this oppressed and persecuted people.

RECONSTRUCTION COMPLETE. PRESIDENT PROCLAIMS PARDON AND AMNESTY

President Johnson's final proclamation restoring to citizenship all who had been engaged in rebellion against the Government was promulgated on Decem- ber 24, 1868. The great majority of offenders had been cured of their political disabilities at an earlier period but there had been many exceptions of those who had been mainly instrumental in bringing on the war. This proclamation leaves none outside the pale of citizenship :

Whereas, the President of the United States has heretofore set forth several proclama- tions of amnesty and pardon to persons who were concerned in the late rebellion against the lawful of the Government of the United States, which proclamations were severally issued on December 8, 1863; March 26, 1864; May 29, 1865; September 7, 1866; and July 6th of the present year; and,

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 90

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1198

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198